SEC men's basketball has a new officiating boss this season: Jake Bell, a veteran college basketball official and former Atlantic Sun coordinator. He will work from his home in Lexington, Ky. In an interview this week, Bell discussed his new role, his goal of using only officials who worked in the NCAA Tournament, and his surprise that he even got the job.

Q: What's your approach on who you hire to referee games?

"There's basically two categories with the people we use. Number is the people we've identified as younger officials that we feel have the potential to referee in the SEC who have been very successful in the mid-majors. So we really look at those hard. And then if we hire some other officials, they're NCAA Tournament officials. We hired six NCAA Tournament officials (after last season) new to the SEC."

"We have about 54 to 56. That's normal. I probably should have hired a couple more at the end of the day. But I think around 60 is an adequate number to maintain. There's two different types of contracts -- primary contract and secondary. Primary is the guys who say I'm all in the SEC. Secondary is the guy who says I'm a Big Ten official but I'll come over here and work 10 to 15 games for you."

Q: How many primary refs do you have?

"It's about half and half."

Q: I'm sure you've heard the criticism that refs travel all the time and work so many games. There are fatigue issues with these officials, correct?

"There is, no question. The only explanation is they're independent contractors and we can't determine the number of games and where they are."

Q: But couldn't coordinators say they've worked too many games this week and not schedule them for a particular game?

"Right. But at that point, sometimes I don't know where they're going to be the night before with the sequencing. There's really no way to control that."

Q: Is there a shortage of good refs in college basketball?

"We always need quality officials, and our definition of quality officials is NCAA Tournament officials -- the top 100 in the United States. Basically, I've told the (SEC) coaches that hopefully in the near future I can walk in and say every conference game is refereed by NCAA Tournament officials."

Q: Have there been many primary SEC refs used in the NCAA Tournament?

"Oh yeah. We had one in the finals last year. We had three in the regionals. We had about 20 or 25 primary in the NCAA Tournament last year. The main thing is they need to be primary. Because for all of the secondary guys, I'm not going to hire them unless they're NCAA Tournament officials."

Q: What got you interested in taking this job?

"I refereed in the SEC -- '70s, '80s, '90s. I've been doing this job in the Atlantic Sun for seven years. Last year in the Atlantic Sun I used 29 SEC referees in our games so I'm real acquainted with the personnel. Somehow I raised my hand and I was chosen. Nobody knows why. You know what? I was more surprised than you, and you were really surprised so you know how I was."